U.S. History


Large number of immigrants came from Ireland (1845 potato famine) and Germany

The Irish generally settled in the industrialized cities of the Northeast

The Germans generally settled in the Midwest and became farmers or went into business

Many immigrants experienced nativism (hostility toward foreigners)

Strong Anti-Catholic sentiment in America at this time


Began in Kentucky

All people could attain grace through faith

Unitarians: did not believe that Jesus was the Son of
God (he was a great teacher)

God is a unity, not a trinity

Universalists: universal salvation of souls

Did not believe in Hell; Believed God intends to save everyone

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
(Mormons)

“Spiritual Reform From Within”
[Religious Revivalism]
Social Reforms & Redefining the Ideal of Equality
Temperance
Asylum &
Penal Reform
Abolitionism
Women’s
Rights
Education

1. Antebellum (before the war)—1820 to 1860
• Romantic age
• Reformers pointed the inequality in society
• Industrialization vs. progress in human rights
• Primarily a Northern movement
• Southerner’s refused reforms to protect slavery.
• Educated society through
• newspaper and lyceum meetings
• Areas to reform:
• Slavery
• Industrialization
• Male domination
• War women’s rights public school temperance (alcohol) prison reform



The most significant reform movements of the period sought not to withdraw from society but to change it directly
Temperance Movement — undertook to eliminate social problems by curbing drinking
 Temperance: moderation in the consumption of alcohol
 Led largely by clergy, the movement at first focused on drunkenness and did not oppose moderate drinking
 In 1826 the American Temperance Society was founded, taking voluntary abstinence as its goal.

• sign pledges, pamphlets, anti-alcohol tracts
• 10 nights in a Barroom and What I Saw There:
Published in 1854 by Timothy Shay Arthur; most important
American temperance novel
• stressed temperance and individual will to resist


During the next decade approximately 5000 local temperance societies were founded

As the movement gained momentum, annual per capita consumption of alcohol dropped sharply

From the first glass to the grave, 1846


Romanticism: feeling over reason, inner spirituality over external rules, the individual above society, and nature over environments created by humans

Transcendentalism: urged people to transcend, or overcome, the limits of their minds and let their souls reach out to embrace the beauty of the universe


Ralph Waldo Emerson: Nature

Nathaniel Hawthorn: The Scarlet Letter

Herman Melville: Moby Dick

Edgar Allan Poe: short stories

Walt Whitman: Leaves of Grass

Emily Dickinson: I’m Nobody

In 1800, Massachusetts was the only state requiring free public schools supported by community funds


 Under Horace Mann’s leadership in the 1830s,
Massachusetts created a state board of education and adopted a minimumlength school year.
 Provided for training of teachers, and expanded the curriculum to include subjects such as history and geography

 By the 1850s the number of schools, attendance figures, and school budgets had all increased sharply
 School reformers enjoyed their greatest success in the Northeast and the least in the South
 Southern planters opposed paying taxes to educate poorer white children
 Educational opportunities for women also expanded: Elizabeth Blackwell became the first woman to earn a medical degree in the United
States or Europe

Asylums isolated and separated the criminal, the insane, the ill, and the dependent from outside society
“Rehabilitation”

The goal of care in asylums, which had focused on confinement, shifted to the reform of personal character




Dorothea Dix , a Boston schoolteacher, took the lead in advocating state supported asylums for the mentally ill
She attracted much attention to the movement by her report detailing the horrors to which the mentally ill were subjected
 being chained, kept in cages and closets, and beaten with rods
In response to her efforts, 28 states maintained mental institutions by 1860




Cotton and rice plantations needed slaves for labor
The majority of slaves were located in the South
Two basic slave working organizations:

Task system: used on farms and small plantations; slaves were given a specific set of jobs to accomplish every day and worked until these were complete. After completing the tasks, the remainder of the day was their own

Gang system: on large plantations; slaves were organized into work gangs that labored from sunup to sundown


Slave codes:
 forbade slaves from owning property or leaving their master’s premises without permission

 could not possess firearms or testify against a white person in court could not learn to read or write



Not all African Americans were slaves.
By 1850, there were approximately 225,000 free
African Americans living in the South. 196,000 free African Americans lived in the North.

 1816 --> American Colonization Society created (gradual, voluntary emancipation.

 Create a free slave state in liberia, West
Africa.
 No real anti-slavery sentiment in the North in the 1820s & 1830s.
Gradualists Immediatists

• William Lloyd Garrison , publisher of the The liberator , first appeared in 1831 and sent shock waves across the entire country
– He argued about gradual emancipation and said that there needed to be an immediate end to slavery at once
– He supported racial equality.

Premiere issue  January 1, 1831

• Free blacks, such as Frederick
Douglass, who had escaped from slavery in Maryland, also joined the abolitionist movement
• To abolitionists, slavery was a moral, not an economic question
• But most of all, abolitionists denounced slavery as contrary to
Christian teaching
• 1845 --> The Narrative of the Life
Of Frederick Douglass
• 1847 --> started his own newspaper called “The North Star”

The Tree of Slavery —Loaded with the Sum of All Villanies!

http://www.scho
lastic.com/teach ers/article/sojou rner-truthainx2019t-iwoman
1850 --> The Narrative of Sojourner Truth

The Underground Railroad
 “Conductor” ==== leader of the escape
 “Passengers” ==== escaping slaves
 “Tracks” ==== routes
 “Trains” ==== farm wagons transporting the escaping slaves
 “Depots” ==== safe houses to rest/sleep

Growth of slavery

Growth of slavery

• Gag rule was passed in Congress which nothing concerning slavery could be discussed.
• Under the gag rule , anti-slavery petitions were not read on the floor of
Congress
• The rule was renewed in each
Congress between
1837 and 1839.
• In 1840 the House passed an even stricter rule, which refused to accept all anti-slavery petition.
On December 3,
1844, the gag rule was repealed

 Abolitionism forced the churches to face the question of slavery head-on, and in the 1840s the Methodist and Baptist churches each split into northern and southern organizations over the issue of slavery
 Even the abolitionists themselves splintered
 More conservative reformers wanted to work within established institutions, using churches and political action to end slavery

The
“Virtuous
Republic” or moral excellence
Roman statesman regarded as a model of simple virtue; he twice was called to assume dictatorship of Rome and each time retired to his farm (519-438 BC)
1.
Govt. gets its authority from the citizens.
2.
A selfless, educated citizenry.
3.
Elections should be frequent.
4.
Govt. should guarantee individual rights & freedoms.
5.
Govt.’s power should be limited [checks & balances].
6.
The need for a written
Constitution.
7.
“E Pluribus Unum.” [“Out of many, one”]
8.
An important role for women  raise good, virtuous citizens.
[“Republican Womanhood”].

th
1.
Unable to vote.
2.
Legal status of a minor.
3.
Single --> could own her own property.
4.
Married --> no control over her property or her children.
5.
Could not initiate divorce.
6.
Couldn’t make wills, sign a contract, or bring suit in court without her husband’s permission.

“Separate Spheres” Concept
Republican Motherhood evolved into the “Cult of Domesticity” e
A woman’s “sphere” was in the home (it was a refuge from the cruel world outside).
e
Her role was to “civilize” her husband and family.
e
An 1830s MA minister:
The power of woman is her dependence. A woman who gives up that dependence on man to become a reformer yields the power God has given her for her protection, and her character becomes unnatural!

Cult of Domesticity = Slavery
The 2 nd Great Awakening inspired women to improve society.
Angelina Grimk é Sarah Grimk é
 Southern Abolitionists
R2-9

Lucy Stone
American Women’s
Suffrage Assoc.
 edited Woman’s Journal

When abolitionists divided over the issue of female participation, women found it easy to identify with the situation of the slaves
1848: Feminist reform led to the
Seneca Falls Convention
Significance: launched modern women’s rights movement
Established the arguments and the program for the women’s rights movement for the remainder of the century

The first Woman’s rights movement was in Seneca Falls, New York in
1849……
•The things they talked about:
•Educational and professional opportunities
•Property rights
•Legal equality
•repeal of laws awarding the father custody of the children in divorce.
•Suffrage rights

• The following is an excerpt from the
Seneca Falls
Declaration written by Elizabeth Cady
Stanton.
• Notice that the language and wording is similar to the
Declaration of
Independence .

We hold these truths to be selfevident that all men and women are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights governments are instituted, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed……

The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world….
• He has made her, if married, in the eye of the law, civilly dead.
• He has taken from all right in property, even to the wages she earns.

He has made her, morally, an irresponsible being, as she can commit many crimes with impunity, provided they be done in the presence of her husband.
In the covenant of marriage, she is compelled to promise obedience to her husband, he becoming, to all intents and purposes, her master; the law giving him power to deprive her of her liberty, and to administer chastisement.

1840 --> split in the abolitionist movement over women’s role in it.
London --> World Anti-Slavery Convention
Lucretia Mott Elizabeth Cady Stanton
1848 -->
Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments

“The married women and their legal status. What is servitude? “The condition of a slave.” What is a slave?
“A person who is robbed of the proceeds of his labor; a person who is subject to the will of another…”
I submit the deprivation by law of ownership of one’s own person, wages, property, children, the denial of right as an individual, to sue and be sued, to vote, and to testify in the courts, is a condition of servitude most bitter and absolute, though under the sacred name of marriage.
Seneca Falls Declaration